Ooh chilling.It reminds me of an Ian Banks novel where the Culture goes to war to stop various civilizations from running virtual, simulated hells, where good or bad deeds are punished or rewarded by the torment of digitized personalities after death.And in a virtual world, there's nothing to stop someone being tortured to death, again and again and again.

Then, saturated with joy, you will put an end to suffering and stress.SN 9.11

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]

James the Giant wrote:Ooh chilling.It reminds me of an Ian Banks novel where the Culture goes to war to stop various civilizations from running virtual, simulated hells, where good or bad deeds are punished or rewarded by the torment of digitized personalities after death.And in a virtual world, there's nothing to stop someone being tortured to death, again and again and again.

There are other SF treatments, too. One you may have missed (especially since it was a debut novel) is The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. It opens in a prison in which the lead character is forced to endlessly play the Prisoner's Dilemma game (co-operate or defect?) against multiple copies of himself, or other beings, and dies painfully when he loses, only to be brought back to life. (It does get better, but also weirder.)Greg Egan has also written some great stories about what might happen if we go silicon.

To answer the OP: Yes, of course. It may be crooked but (so far as I know) it's the only game in town.

Why exist? Just let me die already! Life has difficulties as it is, so why continue and pay for it?

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

Rui Sousa wrote:Great satyre. But the question is very meaninguful. Do I wish to continue experiencing life? The honest answer is yes

Not proud of it anymore, but I really want to be alive and have a body and mind just as this one. And so I do.

I feel that way also. But remember that one can enter the stream that leads to Nibbana, and although bhava-tanha is not fully abandoned at that stage, at least we would have shut the door on reappearance in the animal, ghostly or hell realms, permanently.Let's enter the stream that leads inexorably to Nibbana...

Then the Blessed One, picking up a tiny bit of dust with the tip of his fingernail, said to the monk, "There isn't even this much form...feeling...perception...fabrications...consciousness that is constant, lasting, eternal, not subject to change, that will stay just as it is as long as eternity." (SN 22.97)

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725